Nevil Shute: profile - Telegraph Books Nevil Shute: profile Nevile Shute worked with Barnes Wallis and once wrote a gripping novel about metal fatigue. As A Town Like Alice and other classic works are reprinted, Philip Hensher salutes the literary craftsman By Philip Hensher 6:30AM GMT 04 Dec 2009 As we head into the last winter of a Labour Government, in a country appallingly in debt and facing a bleak future, what are we going to read to pass the time? For decades, contemporary novelists have taken it for granted that their readers will be roughly Left-liberal. They will be opposed with a passion to any remotely Right-wing views and unified in their hatred for, say, Margaret Thatcher, like medieval peasants around a sputtering fire. Things were not always so: step forward Nevil Shute. Vintage has put the collected works of Shute back into print – all 23 novels, written over four decades in the middle of the last century.

The four best-known titles (A Town Like Alice, Requiem for a Wren, Pied Piper and On the Beach) were published in September, with the rest available on order, through print-on-demand. But there was such demand from bookshops that Vintage decided to do short print runs so every title would be available in the ordinary way. Vintage has struck a chord, and Shute is definitely back in fashion. He has some distinguished fans. When I mentioned him to a couple of novelist friends, I was surprised by their instant and unqualified enthusiasm. “Ooh, I think he’s wonderful,” Jenny Colgan said. “Proper handcrafted storytelling – you don’t get that any more.” Susan Hill marvelled at his “extraordinary ability to range over a large number of places, situations, countries, human types, never repeating himself”. It was unexpected that women novelists in particular seemed to respond to Shute’s world. Candia McWilliam, who said she knew lots of women who were fans, told me that he “set a certain old-fashioned taste in terse unwordy chaps for several girls I know”.

Novelists respect craft and tend not to be very concerned whether a novelist is on the “right” side of the argument, or about questions of political correctness or, indeed, personal niceness. Shute – real name, Nevil Shute Norway – was a writer from an unusual background. He was not a conventionally literary person at all. His daughter Shirley Norway, in a talk to the Nevil Shute Society, told how, late in life, he felt he ought to be better read and “spent the astronomical sum of £30 on books which he felt he ought to have read… I don’t think he read many of them.” His father, Arthur Hamilton Norway, was a writer of “rather dry books”, another daughter, Heather Mayfield, remarked on the same occasion: “Highways and Byways in Devon and Cornwall, History of the Post Office Packet Service”. The young Norway became an engineer, taking a third-class degree from Balliol College, Oxford (the equivalent of a 2:1 today), and went to work for Vickers, the aircraft company, in the early Twenties. He worked on the R-100 airship as chief calculator alongside Barnes Wallis.

It was the private industry equivalent of the government-funded R-101. Both the engineering basis of flight and the rivalry between private enterprise and public project fed his imagination, in unexpected ways, to the end of his life. There was another crucial element in his personality, which everyone who knew him commented on: his stammer. Many stammerers become withdrawn people. Shute’s daughter Shirley comments, with psychological acuity, that in his case, it was not a reluctance to express himself, but “a reluctance to let anybody else talk”, noting that he stammered when he lost his temper, as he apparently frequently did. The early novels, such as So Disdained (1928), often have a John Buchan-ish quality, updated to contemporary circumstances. In most of his later work there are, unusually for thrillers, no villains. The heroes struggle against circumstances and, often, against a hostile political regime. In later novels, a dying and over-controlled England is frequently contrasted with Australia, a place where enterprise can lead to fortune and fulfilment. Shute acted on his beliefs: when Attlee was elected for a second time in 1950, he moved his family to Australia, where he remained.

The opening section of The Far Country (1952) sets out his principles, contrasting a married couple in Australia, who have made a fortune, with their old aunt in England, impoverished and starving through the policies of the post-war state. The drive of personal enterprise against the best intentions of government is a constant theme. The celebrated A Town Like Alice (1950) doesn’t end with the reunification of the lovers: it presses forward to show the heroine establishing a manufacturing business, employing much of the town and boosting the local economy until it starts to become, indeed, a town like Alice Springs. An intriguing but not entirely successful novel, In the Wet, published to coincide with the Queen’s coronation in 1953, contains a speculative sequence set in the Eighties, in which the Queen is wrested from the control of a socialist government by free-marketeer regimes and flown to the colonies. Shute’s last novel, the excellent Trustee from the Toolroom (1960), sustains the diatribe to the end. It starts with a rich couple who convert their savings into diamonds, conceal the jewels in a yacht and sail off to the United States to sell them away from the curiosity of the government.

Their crime is “about the worst thing you can do, apart from murdering someone”, the novel asserts with a barely straight face. After their death in a tropical storm, the engineer brother of the woman goes after the diamonds and smuggles them back into the country in the innards of an engine. The last pages are a wonderful flourish of gleeful cheekiness. Shute doesn’t mention the new wealth, but ends thus: “He is perfectly, supremely happy” – a reference, presumably, to getting away with it at the government’s expense. Shute’s pessimism about the effects of the small-minded dealings of politicians resulted in his most famous and resonant novel, On the Beach (1957), in which a city waits, defeated, for the end of the world, whiling away the remaining hours with suicidal sport. The colossal effect of On the Beach is interestingly foreshadowed by a pre-Second World War novel, What Happened to the Corbetts (1938). A devastating bombing raid on Southampton leads to food shortages and cholera, as well as psychological problems. Few novelists of the time had the capacity to think this one through.

Henry Green in Party Going or George Orwell in Coming Up for Air allowed themselves to allude to the terrors to come, but could not or would not construct them in the detail that Shute commanded. The interest lies, in the oddest way, in the most uncompromising technical detail, the glamour of which Shute regarded with a respect bordering on awe. Requiem for a Wren (1955) is mostly a love story, but the narrator can tell off the top of his head that if a sheep farm produced 716 bales of wool in a year, its annual income must be £130,000. Other novels, such as No Highway (1948), about the unpromising but in the event thrilling subject of metal fatigue, are only interesting when they become technical. One of the charms of Trustee from the Toolroom is the way the engineer brother, a writer for Miniature Mechanic magazine, is greeted like a celebrity by the various sailors, aviators and American millionaires he comes across as he voyages to Tahiti. Shute was an avid reader – “cover to cover”, his daughter Heather said – of Model Engineer magazine and here is his sincere tribute.

This is boys’ own stuff, you might think, and Shute’s fascinating autobiography, Slide Rule, is about as sensitive and introspective as its title suggests. But the novels are beautifully written, knowledgeable, worldly men’s books that hold a surprising appeal to women, as I found. There were novelists on the other side of the ideological divide who tried to cover a sort of Shute-ish territory – C P Snow, for instance. But Shute was a better technician and possessed a more authentic novelistic mastery. He is a sort of minor, but real, magician. Is it too much to ask that some enterprising publisher might now commission the full-dress autobiography that so adventurous a figure undoubtedly deserves? Nevil Shute’s novels are published by Vintage at £8.99 each Nevil Shute Foundation—Title Oil portrait of Nevil Shute Norway A Brief Biography of Nevil Shute Norway By John R Henry There are only two (but see below) biographies of Nevil Shute. One is is autobiography "Slide Rule: The Autobiography of an Engineer" The other is Julian Smith's 1976 book "Nevil Shute".

The Julian Smith Biography is available in print and copies may be purchased from the Paper Tiger at Webmaster's note. In 2011, a new biography, written by John Anderson entitled "Parallet Motion" was published. Further details can be found here One of my very favorite authors is Nevil Shute. (NOTE: Nevil Shute's full name is Nevil Shute Norway. I will refer to him by his nom de plume in this site.) I have read all of his books and enjoyed them all. Some I have especially enjoyed. My two favorites are "Ruined City" (also known as "Kindling" in the US) and "A Town Like Alice" (A/K/A "The Legacy"). These are not only my two favorite Shute books but perhaps my two favorite books of all I have read. Most people in the US of a certain age know Nevil Shute only as the author of "On the Beach". Perhaps a few more know him for "A Town Like Alice" as well. "On the Beach" was required reading in high school in the 60's along with "1984" and "Animal Farm".

I have always supposed that it was because all of them played into the RED MENACE!!!! that we faced in those years. That's not to say that it is not a great book, though perhaps not in my top five of his works. Simply a reflection on how politics colored the high school reading list in the 60's. Interestingly, when my son was in the 8th grade, in 1988-89, he also read "On the Beach". He loved it. I spoke to his teacher and asked her why they did not read other Nevil Shute books. Her response was that she did not know he had written any others. In actuality, Mr Shute was the author of 24 novels and an autobiography between 1926 and 1960. Most were very successful in their day. Mr Shute was born January 17, 1899 in London. His father was a writer of minor note of travel books. His father's real job (ever noticed how many writers have "real" jobs in addition to writing?) was with the British Post Office.

In 1916, at the time of the Easter Rebellion, his office was in the Dublin Post Office building but he was unharmed. Nevil Shute was an ambulance driver with the St John's Brigade and was close to some of the fighting. Mr Shute tried to get into Sandhurst but failed to do so. He crammed and got into the army but did not leave England during the war. After the war, he went to school at Balliol College, Oxford and then began working as an aeronautical engineer, first for deHavillands. He then moved to Vickers company where he was involved in the design of the airship R-100. He was initially hired on as a stress calculator but by the time the project ended 5 years later was chief engineer. The Canadian National Air Museum has a very nice site with pictures and text of the R-100's visit to Canada in the early 30's. the trustees of the estate of Nevil Shute have also graciously given me permission to web publish his account of the flight to Canada.

After the end of the airship project, jobs were hard to come by due to the depression so Mr Shute started an aircraft manufacturing company, Airspeed Limited. This company was ultimately successful and built a large number of aircraft during the war. One major type was the Airspeed Oxford. Others for which I have posted pictures and specs are the Airspeed Courier and the Airspeed Envoy. The Envoy was the British "Queen's Flight" (equivalent to our "Air Force One" in it's day). Nevil Shute had a long association with the British Aircraft manufacturer de Havillands. His first aviation job was with them and they wound up buying Airspeed Ltd. It is fitting that a de Havilland Fox Moth should play a key role in "Round the Bend". I have posted A picture and description Nevil Shute was one of the leading aeronautical engineers in Britain during the 30's and a fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society. When he began writing in the 20''s, he feared that a reputation as a writer of fiction might harm his engineering career.

For this reason he published under his two Christian names (Nevil Shute) and engineered under his "real" name, Nevil S. Norway. Mr Shute was bought out in 1939 after a dispute with his board of directors and spent the war in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve working on special weapons projects. A fictionalized account of one of these projects appears in "Most Secret". Mr Shute wrote his autobiography "Slide Rule: the Autobiography of an Engineer" in 1954. It covers his life up to his leaving of Airspeed Limited. It mainly discusses his professional life and is interesting for the lengthy discussion of the R-100/R-101 airship competition and for his discussion of the trials and travails of starting an aircraft company in England during the depression. He also discusses the aircraft industry in general in those days. It is an excellent book which reads like a novel. It is all the more interesting because it is true. After the war, Mr Shute devoted full time to writing and, in 1949, moved to Australia. Seven of his postwar novels are set in Australia and, for this, he gained a reputation as an "Australian" writer.

Mr Shute died in 1960. He was survived by his wife Frances Mary and two daughters, Shirley and Heather Felicity. Heather currently resides in the United States; Shirley died in 2009 . There is also a grandson, granddaughter and great-granddaughter. The family of Nevil Shute Norway (Photo taken 17 January 1999 at NS Centennial) Seated:- left to right: Don Mayfield, son-in-law (Husband of Heather Norway Mayfield); Heather Norway Mayfield, daughter; Keith Mayfield, Grandson (Son of Don and Heather Mayfield); Shirley Norway, Daughter; Jennifer Mayfield, Granddaughter (Daughter of Don and Heather Mayfield).

Standing:- David Alumbaugh, Grandson-in-law (Husband of Jennifer Mayfield); Cassandra Mayfield, Granddaughter-in-law (Wife of Keith Mayfield), with Felicity Rose, Great-granddaughter; Copyright MMI - MMXVI Nevil Shute Foundation Shute Surname, Family Crest & Coats of Arms Shute Surname, Family Crest & Coats of Arms Buy PDF History » The surname Shute was first found in Wiltshire at Chute, a civil parish that includes the village of Upper Chute and the smaller settlements of Lower Chute, Chute Standen, Chute Cadley and Chute Forest. Alternatively the name could have originated from Shute, a parish, in the union of Axminster, hundred of Colyton in Devon . This place name dates back to c. 1200 when it was listed as Schieta and literally meant "the corner or angle of land." [1] CITATION[CLOSE] Mills, A.D., Dictionary of English Place-Names. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991. Print.

(ISBN 0-19-869156-4) The Old Shute House located nearby is now an impressive edifice that dates back to a simple building built in 1380. It is currently held by the National Trust. Shute Spelling Variations Spelling variations of this family name include: Shute, Chute, Chewte, Shutes and others. Shute Early History Shute Early History This web page shows only a small excerpt of our Shute research.

Another 267 words (19 lines of text) covering the years 1500, 1268, 1506, 1567, 1542, 1545, 1584, 1590, 1595, 1563, 1588, 1643, 1659, 1654, 1659, 1632, 1666, 1659, 1661, 1662, 1742, 1665, 1722, 1696 and 1698 are included under the topic Early Shute History in all our PDF Extended History products and printed products wherever possible. Shute Early Notables (pre 1700) Shute Early Notables (pre 1700) Distinguished members of the family include Philip Chute or Chowte (c.

1506-1567), of Horne Place, Appledore, Kent , an English politician, Member of Parliament for Winchelsea 1542 and 1545; Sir Robert Chute, Justice of the Queen's Bench, 1584; Anthony Chute ( fl. 1590s; died 1595), an Elizabethan poet and pamphleteer; John Shute (d... Another 101 words (7 lines of text) are included under the topic Early Shute Notables in all our PDF Extended History products and printed products wherever possible. Shute In Ireland Shute In Ireland Some of the Shute family moved to Ireland , but this topic is not covered in this excerpt. Another 75 words (5 lines of text) about their life in Ireland is included in all our PDF Extended History products and printed products wherever possible.

The Great Migration Some of the first settlers of this family name were: Shute Settlers in United States in the 17th Century Lionel Shute from Ipswich, England , who arrived in America in 1639 James and Hanna Shute came to Virginia in 1642 Martin Shute, who arrived in Virginia in 1642 William Shute, who arrived in Pennsylvania in 1682 Shute Settlers in United States in the 18th Century Richard Shute, who arrived in Boston, Massachusetts in 1703 Mary Shute, who landed in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1731-1732 Jacob Shute, who arrived in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1746 James Shute, who landed in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1746 Shute Settlers in Canada in the 18th Century Nathan Shute, who landed in Nova Scotia in 1750 Ms. Susannah Shute U.E.

who arrived at Port Roseway, [Shelbourne], Nova Scotia on October 26, 1783 was passenger number 106 aboard the ship "HMS Clinton", picked up on September 20, 1783 at East River, New York, USA [2] CITATION[CLOSE] Rubincam, Milton. The Old United Empire Loyalists List. Genealogical Publishing Co., Inc, 1976. (Originally published as; United Empire Loyalists. The Centennial of the Settlement of Upper Canada. Rose Publishing Company, 1885.) ISBN 0-8063-0331-X Shute Settlers in Australia in the 19th Century Henry Shute arrived in Adelaide, Australia aboard the ship "Diadem" in 1840 [3] CITATION[CLOSE] State Records of South Australia . (Retrieved 2010, November 5) The barque DIADEM 1840. Retrieved from Jane Shute arrived in Adelaide, Australia aboard the ship "Diadem" in 1840 [3] CITATION[CLOSE] State Records of South Australia .

(Retrieved 2010, November 5) The barque DIADEM 1840. Retrieved from Henry Shute, Scottish convict from Glasgow, who was transported aboard the "Adelaide" on August 08, 1849, settling in Van Diemen's Land and Port Phillip, Australia [4] CITATION[CLOSE] State Library of Queensland. (Retrieved 2014, November 17) Adelaide voyage to Van Diemen's Land and Port Phillip, Australia in 1849 with 303 passengers. Retrieved from Dorothea Shute, aged 18, a servant, arrived in South Australia in 1854 aboard the ship "Taymouth Castle" Elizabeth Shute, aged 20, a servant, arrived in South Australia in 1854 aboard the ship "Taymouth Castle" ...

(More are available in all our PDF Extended History products and printed products wherever possible.) Shute Settlers in New Zealand in the 19th Century Thomas Shute, aged 24, a farm labourer, arrived in Napier aboard the ship "Rakaia" in 1879 Contemporary Notables of the name Shute (post 1700) Contemporary Notables of the name Shute (post 1700) Steve Shute, American Republican politician, Delegate to Republican National Convention from Kansas, 2012 Michael Shute, American politician, Delegate to Socialist National Convention from Young People's Socialist League, 1960 John Raymond Shute (b. 1904), American Democrat politician, Member of North Carolina State Senate 19th District, 1935 Frank C. Shute, American Republican politician, Delegate to Republican National Convention from Louisiana, 1924 Elena B.

Shute, American Democrat politician, Postmaster at Belfast, Maine, 1951-54 (acting, 1951-54) Attwood Shute, American politician, Mayor of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1756-58 Herman Densmore "Denny" Shute (1904-1974), American golfer who won 16 wins on the PGA tour, inductee into the World Golf Hall of Fame Nevil Shute (1899-1960), pen name of Nevil Shute Norway, English-born, Australian novelist and aeronautical engineer John W. Shute (1840-1922), American banker, founder of the first bank in Washington County, Oregon, eponym of Shute Park and Shute Road in Hillsboro, Oregon Henry Shute (1856-1943), American lawyer and author best known for his "Plupy" stories in The Saturday Evening Post ... (Another 5 notables are available in all our PDF Extended History products and printed products wherever possible.) Shute Historic Events Mr. Harry L Shute (b.

1901), English Leading Cook (O) serving for the Royal Navy from Portsmouth, Hampshire , England , who sailed into battle on the HMS Hood and died on 24th May 1941 in the sinking Motto Motto The motto was originally a war cry or slogan. Mottoes first began to be shown with arms in the 14th and 15th centuries, but were not in general use until the 17th century. Thus the oldest coats of arms generally do not include a motto. Mottoes seldom form part of the grant of arms: Under most heraldic authorities, a motto is an optional component of the coat of arms, and can be added to or changed at will; many families have chosen not to display a motto. Motto: Fortune de guerre Motto Translation: The fortune of war. Shute Family Crest Products Leeson, Francis L. Dictionary of British Peerages. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing, 1986. Print. (ISBN 0-8063-1121-5). Browning, Charles H. Americans of Royal Descent. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing. Print. Markale, J.

Celtic Civilization. London: Gordon & Cremonesi, 1976. Print. Egle, William Henry. Pennsylvania Genealogies Scotch-Irish and German. Harrisburg: L.S. Hart, 1886. Print. Robb H. Amanda and Andrew Chesler. Encyclopedia of American Family Names. New York: Haper Collins, 1995. Print. (ISBN 0-06-270075-8). Foster, Joseph. Dictionary of Heraldry Feudal Coats of Arms and Pedigrees. London: Bracken Books, 1989. Print. (ISBN 1-85170-309-8). Passenger Lists of Vessels Arriving at Galveston Texas 1896-1951. National Archives Washington DC. Print. Shaw, William A. Knights of England A Complete Record from the Earliest Time to the Present Day of the Knights of all the Orders of Chivalry in England, Scotland, Ireland and Knights Bachelors 2 Volumes. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing. Print.

(ISBN 080630443X). Best, Hugh. Debrett's Texas Peerage. New York: Coward-McCann, 1983. Print. (ISBN 069811244X). Bede, The Venerable. Historia Ecclesiatica Gentis Anglorum (The Ecclesiastical History Of the English People). Available through Internet Medieval Sourcebook the Fordham University Centre for Medieval Studies. Print. ... The Shute Family Crest was acquired from the Houseofnames.com archives. The Shute Family Crest was drawn according to heraldic standards based on published blazons. We generally include the oldest published family crest once associated with each surname. This page was last modified on 13 June 2016 at 11:31.

Sign Up Biography - Nevil Shute Norway - Australian Dictionary of Biography Australian Dictionary of Biography Tip: searches only the name field Tip: Use double quotes to search for a phrase by Julian Croft This article was published in Australian Dictionary of Biography , Volume 15, (MUP), 2000 Nevil Shute Norway (1899-1960), writer and aeronautical engineer, was born on 17 January 1899 at Ealing, London, second child of Arthur Hamilton Norway, a clerk in the General Post Office, and his wife Mary Louisa, née Gadsden. In 1912 Arthur became secretary of the Post Office in Ireland. Father and son had first-hand experience of the siege of its Dublin headquarters at Easter 1916. Educated in England at Lynam's (the Dragon) School, Oxford, and Shrewsbury School, Shropshire, Nevil suffered from a stammer which, though it lessened, was still noticeable late in life. It prevented him from being commissioned in the British Army in mid-1918 when he completed training at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich.

He served (from August) in England as a private in the 1st Reserve Battalion, Suffolk Regiment, then entered Balliol College, Oxford (B.A., 1923), where he read engineering. From an early age Norway showed an intense interest in aeroplanes. While at Oxford he undertook unpaid work for the de Havilland Aircraft Co. in university vacations. He started regular employment with the firm in January 1923. During this time he learned to fly and began writing novels. His father had published several travel books with Macmillan & Co. Ltd at the turn of the century and his grandmother had written children's books. Norway completed his first novel in 1923, and another in the following year, but neither was published. In 1924 he joined Vickers Ltd as chief calculator for the famous inventor (Sir) Barnes Wallis who was in charge of the design and construction of the rigid airship, R100.

Norway's account in his autobiography, Slide Rule, of the six-year trials and tribulations of the competitive construction of the airships R100 and R101 (built by the government), and the subsequent disastrous crash of R101 in France on its maiden flight to India, revealed his narrative gifts and some of his major preoccupations as a writer—the hubris of governments, bureaucratic paralysis, and the betrayal of individual common sense by large organizations. As an antidote to the stress of the R100 project, Norway began writing regularly in his spare time. He completed his third novel, Marazan, which was published by Cassell & Co. Ltd in 1926. Sensing that his colleagues and Vickers might think that his writing compromised his commitment to his engineering work, he chose to publish as Nevil Shute (a truncated version of his full name), as he did for all his subsequent writing. Despite the pressures of his daily work, Norway continued to write, and So Disdained was published in 1928.

On 7 March 1931 at St Peter's parish church, Bromley, Kent, he married Frances Mary Heaton, a 28-year-old medical practitioner. That year Norway established his own aircraft construction company, Airspeed Ltd, which became one of the major aircraft-makers in Britain by the outbreak of World War II. So intense was the effort he put into the engineering and business sides of the company that The Lonely Road, published in 1932, marked the beginning of a publishing hiatus of six years. In 1938 Norway recognized that Airspeed was a different company from the one he had founded. The board asked him to resign with a generous settlement that enabled him to devote himself to full-time writing. Ruined City appeared in 1938, followed by What Happened to the Corbetts (1939), An Old Captivity (1940), Landfall: A Channel Story (1940), Pied Piper (1942), Pastoral (1944) and Most Secret (1945). The productivity and commercial success which marked Norway's writing career was evident in this period.

His books, mostly published by Heinemann Ltd in London, also sold well in the Dominions and in the United States of America, and his early apprenticeship had equipped him to write regularly and easily. His published advice to aspiring novelists often referred to writing as a craft and a business—of learning both the structural formulas and the marketing ploys for publishing success. In many ways his professional life as an engineer and businessman informed much of his writing practice. Commissioned lieutenant and promoted acting lieutenant commander, Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, in 1940, he worked in the Admiralty's Miscellaneous Weapon Development Department. After World War II his work became even more commercially successful. The Chequer Board (1947) preceded No Highway (1948), the subject of which—the problems of aircraft design and the effects of metal fatigue—was well-known to him. In 1948 Norway flew his own plane to Australia. Back home, he felt oppressed by British taxation and decided that he and his family would emigrate. With his wife and two daughters, he settled in 1950 on farmland at Langwarrin, south-east of Melbourne.

His greatest successes dated from this time, and most of them had Australian settings: A Town Like Alice (1950), Round the Bend (1951), which Norway considered his most important work, The Far Country (1952) and In the Wet (1953). The last caused some controversy. Released in the coronation year, the novel is partly set in a future where the monarch seeks refuge in Australia from an unsympathetic British government. In 1954 he published Slide Rule which gave an account of his life to 1938. Requiem for a Wren (1955), Beyond the Black Stump (1956) and his most famous book, On the Beach (1957), were followed by The Rainbow and the Rose (1958), Trustee from the Toolroom (1960) and Stephen Morris (1961), the last two published posthumously. Several of his novels were made into films, the most notable being A Town Like Alice (1956), starring Peter Finch , and On the Beach (1959), produced by Stanley Kramer.

Described as a 'friendly, nervous, tweedy man . . . with the strong hands of an engineer', Norway died of a cerebral haemorrhage on 12 January 1960 in East Melbourne and was cremated; his wife and daughters survived him. Norway had few literary pretensions, and publicly confessed that he could not finish reading Patrick White's Voss. He believed that the subject matter for novels came from direct observation of ordinary people in their own settings. An unambiguous morality of strong heroes and loyal heroines, combined with simple characterization, realistic settings alloyed with the fantastic, and exciting and well-told narratives were the basis of his success. His prose style was plain. If his novels seem ponderous to today's taste, they convey very well the last British imperialist vision of the Dominions, Australia in particular, as societies where English virtues might thrive, away from the decadence of postwar Britain. Select Bibliography J. Riddell, Flight of Fancy (Lond, 1950) G. Pawle, The Secret War, 1939-45 (Lond, 1956) J.

Smith, Nevil Shute (Boston, 1976) C. Giffuni, Nevil Shute (Adel, 1988) Sun (Melbourne), 5 June 1954 Observer (London), 20 Dec 1959 Times (London) 13 Jan 1960 New York Times, 13 Jan 1960 Age (Melbourne), 25 Nov 1960. Citation details Julian Croft, 'Norway, Nevil Shute (1899–1960)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, published first in hardcopy 2000, accessed online 20 January 2017.

This article was first published in hardcopy in Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 15, (MUP), 2000 © Copyright Australian Dictionary of Biography, 2006-2017 The Far Country, Nevil Shute | theaustralianlegend theaustralianlegend The Independent Woman and the myth of the Australian bushman Menu Home The Far Country, Nevil Shute The Far Country, Nevil Shute wadholloway Australian , Bush Myths , Literature Book Review , Late C20th Howqua River, Victoria Nevil Shute was the pen name of Nevil Shute Norway (1899-1960). An English born aeronautical engineer and writer, he moved to Australia in 1950, living outside of Melbourne. According to Wikipedia he had 23 novels published including 11 post WWII set wholly or partly in Australia, the most famous being I guess A Town Like Alice (1950), On the Beach (1956) and Beyond the Black Stump (1957).

Shute is not in the first rank of literary writers, but has a very straight forward story telling style which may be a little out of fashion now, or maybe it’s just that I don’t read Bryce Courtenay, Judy Nunn, Di Morrissey … The Far Country (1952) is based around a sheep station in the Victorian high country, near Merrijig and Mt Buller and the Howqua River. (The Howqua now runs into Lake Eildon, the dam for which was constructed 1950-52.) The owners of the station, Jack and Jane Dorman, having endured some tough times, are finally rolling in money due to the Korean War wool boom. In London, Jennifer Morton, a young typist and distant relative of the Dormans, is living with the food and heating shortages which continued on after the end of WWII as the Attlee Labour government made a valiant but doomed attempt to convert the British economy to socialism. Shute is generally critical of the shortages, although acknowledging they date back through mostly Conservative governments to the 1920s, and particularly of the National Health System, introduced in 1948 by Labour.

The arguments he makes, both about the privations of life in England and the general prosperity of Australia no doubt reflect the factors which led to his own decision to emigrate. On the spur of the moment, the Dormans send 500 pounds from their latest wool cheque to Mrs Dorman’s aunt in London. They have been sending her food parcels, lard and dried fruit mostly, but the old lady now appears to be in straitened circumstances, living on the dried fruit and a milk drink called Benger’s Food. But she is on her death bed and passes the money on to Jennifer, her granddaughter, with the proviso she use it for a trip to Australia. Jennifer’s father, clearing out his mother’s things, finds an 1893 cook book with a recipe for fruit cake: His eyes ran back to the ingredients. Two pounds of Jersey butter … eight weeks’ ration for one person. The egg ration for one person for four months [18 eggs] … Currants and sultanas in those quantities; mixed peel, that he had not seen for years … The Dormans are happy to meet Jennifer off the ship in Melbourne and take her back to the farm.

There she meets Carl Zlinter, a Czech doctor, but unable to be registered in Australia without three years retraining, a reffo working out his compulsory two years in a nearby camp as a timber worker. Carl with Jennifer assisting performs an impromptu amputation on a labourer trapped under an overturned bulldozer and surgery on the fractured skull of the dozer driver, on a table in a bush hut, as you do when men are about to die and the nearest real doctor is 50 miles away. After that they inevitably start spending time together. Shute obviously loves the Australian bush, or at least the temperate rain forests north and east of the Dandenongs which were his new home, and spends a good part of the book describing the country and an abandoned gold mining town, barely discernable 50 years after the cessation of mining, where some of the action is set.

Of interest from the point of view of the Australian Legend, is that this book has a quintessential Australian setting, there is even a ‘Lone Hand’ living alone in a hut on the banks of the Howqua, and of course the timber workers camp is all male, but yet you would have to imagine Shute was largely unaware of his predecessors as an Australian writer. His central characters are a young (English) woman and a fortyish Czech doctor; he ignores, is maybe ignorant of, the fact that his setting is right in the heart of Ned Kelly country; only Jack Dorman, an Australian soldier in the First War “who drank port with the butler and never saluted anybody” matches his stereotype. In the end, perhaps Shute, as an outsider, says most about us by not attempting to add to the Legend. I could do another whole blog on the Dormans’ cars.

They go down to stay at the Windsor in Melbourne (I lived for a year, 1971, in a terrace house at the back, in Windsor Lane, when ‘playboy’ Peter Jansen was reputed to occupy the whole top floor) driving a 1946 Chevy truck – maybe a 3 ton Maple Leaf but more likely a sedan with a tray replacing the back half of the body. Jack buys himself a Ford Customline ute and then a Morris for the missus – so she doesn’t have to drive the Chev., she’s obviously not going to get her hands on the Customline. Mum and Dad’s first car – he only had a motorbike when I was born – was a pre-war Chev. I have resisted the temptation to insert here a photo of the Chev, mum, and me in flowing white robes. We probably still had it when Dad got posted to nearby Bonnie Doon a year or so after the period of this book. My oldest memories date from there, the little girls playing mothers and fathers, with me as the baby, and of me toddling into the back of the one-room school during class.

Customline ute, ’56 model I’m guessing The title, The Far Country , refers to the distance not only of Australia from England, of Jennifer from her parents back in Leicester, when most travel was by sea, but also of England from Australia, of the austerity in Britain only dimly perceived by the now prosperous Dormans in the back blocks of Victoria. So yes, I enjoyed The Far Country as a simple story well told, but also as a social history of the times and locales of my earliest years. Nevil Shute, The Far Country, first published by Wm Heinemann, London, 1952 The techie novels of Nevil Shute / Boing Boing Twitter / Facebook / RSS Last month I had a conversation with Dale Grover (co-founder of Maker Works in Ann Arbor, Michigan -- read his profile at Make ) about the late author Nevil Shute. Shute is best known for the novel On the Beach (about a dying Earth after a global nuclear war) but we discussed a lesser-known novel of Shute's called Trustee from the Toolroom , which I read five or six years ago and absolutely loved.

Trustee from the Toolroom is a tremendously compelling and well-plotted adventure story from 1960 about a mild-mannered English columnist for a hobbyist magazine called Miniature Mechanic who is duty bound to recover a container of valuable jewels from his dead brother's wrecked yacht in the South Pacific. (Fun fact from Wikipedia : "Trustee from the Toolroom was voted #27 on the Modern Library Readers' list of the top 100 novels . The top ten in that poll, though, included four works by Ayn Rand and three by L. Ron Hubbard -- according to David Ebershoff, Modern Library's publishing director, 'the voting population [was] skewed.'") During our chat, Dale told me he's read a bunch of Shute's other books, and he was kind enough to email me the next day with mini-reviews of them. I asked Dale if I could run his email on Boing Boing and he said OK.

Here's what he wrote: You have started with what I think is Nevil Shute's best book, but there are some really, really good ones: A Town Like Alice No engineering, but a wonderful story about an English woman caught up in the Japanese invasion in Malaysia, then her transformation of a village and town later. It was made into a really well done mini series. (And a so-so version later on. Go for the long one, 6 hours but worth it.) Slide Rule Shute's autobiography. You knew he started out in aviation engineering? One of his first jobs was helping to design one of a pair of airships for the British government. (He went on to found an aviation company, and later in life he had a home machine shop and made model engines.) No Highway Another engineering one. A "boffin" (nerd) in aviation R&D has to act in the real world on his scientific beliefs. Was made into a great movie (was available on YouTube in its entirety at one point, but I don't see it now), and soon after a great radio drama (should be available online), both starring Marlene Dietrich and Jimmie Stewart. All are highly recommended!

The Far Country A sweet story (Shute had a romantic side), plus Shute was not happy about what was happening politically in England, and saw Australia (where he eventually moved) as offering the opportunities no longer possible in England. Round the Bend Aviation mechanic starts a religion -- Engine maintenance as soulcraft. Set in the mideast post WWII. The Chequerboard , Pastoral , Landfall , In the Wet -- all worth reading. And On the Beach is possibly his most well-known book for the powerful image of the results of a world-wide nuclear war. (It was made into a major movie, but I have not seen it.) It is not an upbeat story, though. Movie has some differences from the book that Shute did not like. Shute's well-known trip to Australia by small plane is captured in Flight of Fancy by James Riddell. Bali is where Riddell lost his heart. There's some advantage in reading it after reading some of the books that came out of this flight -- A Town Like Alice, Round the Bend, The Chequerboard, In the Wet. (Aha -- that's where that scene came from.) It's on the outside looking in on Shute.

Widely available used for about $15. Be sure to poke around on the website for the Nevil Shute Norway Foundation . They do loan out books and movies (I donated my copy of the mini-series of A Town Like Alice). And every few years they have an international gathering. Next one is in NZ, I think.

Question: What is the real surname of Nevil Shute?
Answer: Norway